Discordant Notes Over Need to Practice on a U.S. Open Course

Robert Trent Jones Jr., the architect of the public links-style course hosting this month’s United States Open, likens the circus descending on Chambers Bay Golf Course in less than two weeks to a symphony.

In his analogy, Jones is the composer. The conductor is Mike Davis, the United States Golf Association executive director, in charge of the tournament setup. “And the players are the musicians,” Jones said. “So we want everybody to be in tune so we’ll have some beautiful golf music.”

Perhaps it is fitting, given the Seattle area’s connection to grunge rock, that the feedback before the event has contained a high level of distortion and dissonant harmonies and unmistakable themes of angst, alienation and apathy.

After the first wave of players made their way to the University Place property to check out the quirky course, the Englishman Ian Poulter posted on Twitter, “The reports back are it’s a complete farce.” The green complexes have been called into question, as has Davis’s assertion that “the idea of coming in and playing two practice rounds and having your caddie walk it and using your yardage book, that person’s done. Will not win the U.S. Open.”

Davis suggested in April that anybody serious about winning should plan on playing at least 10 practice rounds. What does that mean for the golfers who will punch their tickets to the tournament in Monday’s 36-hole sectional qualifiers? If they don’t get their first look at Chambers Bay until next weekend, at the earliest, are those golfers, who are expected to make up roughly half the field, arriving too late to contend? Will they be serving as the golf equivalent of seat fillers at the Academy Awards, there, basically, as set pieces?

Tiger Woods, a three-time United States Open champion, spent Monday and Tuesday practicing at Chambers Bay. He said he took three and a half hours to play each nine. He spent an inordinate amount of that time studying the green complexes and how to approach them.

“A lot of homework, a lot of getting numbers, getting a feel for how we’re going to play it because there’s so many different options,” said Woods, who appreciated Davis’s warning once he saw the course.

“You need to get there and play a lot,” Woods said, “because he is going to present you with so many different challenges, so many different options.”

At the same news conference where Davis made his comments about preparation being paramount, the 2014 champion, Martin Kaymer, was asked his plans for embarking on his title defense. He said he would arrive the weekend before, because that was the earliest his hectic playing schedule permitted.

Two other United States Open winners, Webb Simpson and the current world No. 1, Rory McIlroy, expressed similar sentiments. “With the way the tour is, no one is going to go out there and play 10 practice rounds,” McIlroy said.

Simpson, whose plan is to sharpen his game at the tour stop in Memphis starting Thursday, said facetiously, “We’ll play for second.”

Davis’s assertions struck many golfers as an amateur’s miscalculation of the professionals’ skills. It called to mind a director handing an actor 100 pages of dialogue with the warning that he would need ample time to memorize it, not appreciating that a photographic memory is part of the actor’s tool kit.

McIlroy has won on a few courses he had never played before, including Quail Hollow, site of the Wells Fargo Championship. Jordan Spieth nearly won the first time he competed in the Masters, on an Augusta National course known for having more nuances than a foreign language. Kevin Kisner lost in a playoff last month in his first competitive start at TPC Sawgrass, which raised the bar for idiosyncratic courses.

“I think if a guy like myself or anybody else who doesn’t go to Chambers Bay ahead of time, if they’re the best player that week, they’re going to win,” Simpson said. “Doesn’t matter if you’ve seen it twice or 10 times.”

Rickie Fowler, who opted to play in the Irish Open last week instead of making the trek to Chambers Bay for a few practice rounds, is of the same mind as Simpson. He believes his fate rests in his hands, not those of Davis or Jones.

If he is in control of his game, Jones’s quirky design and Davis’s setup won’t matter. “If I’m playing well and hitting my targets and my numbers and my lines,” Fowler said, “it’s going to make it easier to get ready to play golf at the U.S. Open.”

The Memorial Tournament is the final tuneup for the United States Open for Woods and Spieth, the reigning Masters champion, whose caddie, Michael Greller, is more familiar with Chambers Bay than most. He has caddied there and was married on its grounds.

“The only advantage is that he’s seen the course more than any of the other caddies have,” Spieth said, adding, “He’s definitely going to come to the plate with more than the other guys can bring.”

Spieth competed in the 2010 United States Amateur at Chambers Bay, but he played so poorly that week, he does not want to remember the parts of the course he became familiar with. He said he would prepare for his return by working on drawing his ball with his swing coach in Dallas (as opposed to the fade he used to great effect at Augusta National).

Jones writes poetry in his spare time, and he regards Chambers Bay as an interpretive composition that he put down on the shores of the Puget Sound. The rookie Justin Thomas, who advanced to the round of 32 in match play at the 2010 United States Amateur, appreciates the artistic element of Chambers Bay.

“You have to be creative and you have to use your imagination,” Thomas said. “I like having a chip shot and you can’t go directly at the pin. It’s fun, because you’ve got to get a little creative.”

Of course, one golfer’s idea of artistry is another’s example of artifice. Some who have played the course have called it “tricked up.” Others have described it as “interesting,” which many have interpreted to mean the opposite, like “bless your heart” when voiced by a Southern belle.

“Interesting? That’s a nice way of saying what they really think, you think?” said Ryan Moore, a Washington state native.

Jack Nicklaus, the Memorial Tournament host, said that when he heard competitors complaining about the course conditions, he would think to himself: “O.K., I don’t have to worry about that player. I can cross him off the list.”

No need to concede the tournament before it has started, said Jones, who offered this piece of advice: “Golf courses are human. They have human characteristics. You better learn how to dance with that lady or wrestle with that man.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page SP11 of the New York edition with the headline: Discordant Notes Over the Need to Practice . Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe